If there is anyone who has still not seen Avengers: Infinity War and wants to remain unspoiled, STOP READING NOW!!!

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Okay, for here on out it’s your own fault if you get spoiled. Totally.

So, massive numbers of people have seen the film, and a significant subset of those are freaked out by the ending– about how the good guys lost, how Thanos won, how could they kill off so many characters, on and on. Come on, guys, what did you think was going to happen?

Despite certain claims to the contrary, I totally disbelieve the idea that Avengers 4 is going to be a “completely different” film. The Russos are very good story-tellers and they laid a cunning trap for us. Infinity War is, in truth, Part One of a two-part epic. As such, it ended exactly as it should have— with the heroes at their uttermost lowest point, defeated, on their backs, not knowing what to do next. The story required it. Anything else would have been tantamount to cheating, or, worse, cowardice as story-tellers. I don’t think you can accuse the Russos of cowardice. The stunned, weeping fans stumbling out of movie theaters around the world are evidence to the contrary.

Okay, so how do the good guys claw their way out of this hole? The original comic is no sure guide to where the Russos intend to go. But there are clues in the movie. What follows is pure speculation based on my viewing of the film. I could be way, way off-base, but I think there are points of light in the darkness.

First, Dr. Strange saw 14-million-plus possible futures, out of which there was only one– one— in which the good guys win. From the moment he ran through those futures, he had to be working overtime to set that one possibility up. This is the context in which everything that came after has to be understood.

While on the way to Thanos’ homeworld of Titan, Dr. Strange explicitly tells Tony that Strange would let Tony and Peter Parker both die before he gave up the Time Stone. At the critical point of the battle with Thanos, however, when Tony has been stabbed and appears to be dying, Strange suddenly reverses course and hands the Time Stone over, ostensibly in exchange for Tony’s life.

Most people commenting on this assume that means that Tony Stark is critical to ultimate victory for the good guys, and I would not argue with that. After Thanos’ departure with the Time Stone, Tony asks Strange “why”. Strange effectively answers the question in two parts. He first tells Tony that they are “in the end-game now”. Then, just before he dissolves, he tells Stark that “this is the only way this could have played out.” In other words, the one path to victory is in place. It remains to be seen if the surviving heroes can walk it.

Well and good. But I think there’s more to that scene than meets the eye. Watching Strange as he surrenders the Time Stone, the way the scene is cut, and the looks Strange gives Thanos, suggest to me that Strange has jiggered the Time Stone with a hidden spell. There may be some sort of temporal time-bomb ticking away in it. Its exact nature, I can’t guess, but I suspect Thanos will not like it.

Another moment in the fight on Titan was also suggestive of something bigger. At one point Tony manages to scratch Thanos, who laughs it off by saying something to the effect, “All that effort for one drop of blood?”

Hmm. The very fact that the film calls out what would otherwise be a insignificant injury suggests to me that Tony Stark, armed with one drop of Thanos’ blood, may be a formidable foe, indeed. A drop of blood means that Tony now has Thanos’ DNA– and Bruce Banner, world-renown biochemist (along with all his other degrees) yet lives. Tailored bio-weapon, anyone?

Finally, there’s Captain Marvel. The sight of her emblem was the one thing that seemed to lift people’s spirits in the showings I attended. Some have compared her to Superman, and, by the rood, we could use a little of that OP sledgehammeriness right now. Or a lot. Lots and lots. Seeing Captain Marvel open a really big can of whup-ass on Thanos will probably make my year.

How this all plays out in Avengers 4 is anybody’s guess. We won’t have a clue until we see a trailer– hell, at the moment I would settle for the movie’s fracking title— except that there will surely be intense battles, further losses, and probably a bittersweet ending. It would another kind of cheat if the good guys won, and dialed everything back to exactly as it was before Thanos attacked the Asgardian refugee ship. The lesson of Infinity War seems to be that, when confronting ultimate evil, losses are inevitable. It may be that some of the surviving heroes will pay the ultimate price, even as they– possibly– rescue some of those who were lost. We’ll just have to see.

Because I am the obsessive fan-boy that I am, I just had to go see Avengers: Infinity War again this evening. That’s twice in twenty-four hours, children, and it may end up being three times in forty-eight hours, assuming that tomorrow I can do my morning exercise, pay my rent and do my laundry in a timely manner– you know, all the real-life check-off items that exist merely to allow nut-jobs like me to spend inordinate amounts of money and time re-watching Marvel movies. What was once merely entertainment is now a way of life. I am nerd, hear me roar.

(On the other hand, I wonder if seeing the same movie over and over again in a short amount of time is like doing too many wormhole jumps at once? Hmm. I’ll let you know, assuming my eyeballs don’t fall out)

Suffice to say, I enjoyed the movie even more the second time around, in part because I was prepared for the repartee going past at Warp Six. I caught more nuances (especially one that is the core of this post– more about that in a minute), and the audience tonight was especially receptive and engaged. Also, I didn’t have a distraction this time around that detracted a bit from my first viewing, i.e., tonight’s show was not 3-D. I didn’t mention it in my post last night, but the 3-D yesterday, for some reason, seemed kinda muddy and dark. Maybe it was my aging eyes, maybe it was the glasses. All I know is that I liked the regular format better.

Now, about that nuance I mentioned–

SPOILERS***SPOILERS***SPOILERS***SPOILERS***SPOILERS***

Proceed no further if you don’t want to know some details about the film. There, I have said it. Don’t blame me if you keep reading and have your illusions shattered.

Okay, late in the film, Thanos has kicked everyone’s butt who came against him on his own ruined homeworld of Titan– Iron Man, Spider-man, Nebula, Drax, Mantis, Peter Quill/Starlord. He has stabbed Tony right through his advanced armor and it looks like curtains for our playboy/philanthropist/genius (probably didn’t get the order right, but you get the point). Dr. Strange, injured and collapsed nearby, tells Thanos he will surrender the Eye of Agamotto (aka, the Stone of Time) if Thanos will spare Tony.

Two critical points here– this well after the point in the film where Strange tells Tony that he, Strange, would let Tony and Peter Parker (Spider-man) both die before he would give up the Time Stone. It is also after Strange, using the Time Stone, has examined 14 million-plus possible futures and found only one in which the Avengers were able to defeat Thanos. That’s the setup.

(By the way, Tony and Strange do not like each other. It’s almost worth the price of admission just to hear Strange call Tony a “douche-bag”. Oh, yeah….)

Then Strange, strangely, reverses course and hands over the Time Stone to Thanos, ostensibly to save Iron Man’s life. When Tony asks him why he did it, Strange says something to the effect that “this is the only way it could play out”, right before he dissolves (yes, Thanos wins the battle to reset the universe. That’s part of why the cliffhanger ending is such a pisser).

Uh-huh. I had funny feeling last night about Strange surrendering the Time Stone so meekly, and tonight I paid particularly close attention to Strange’s expression as Thanos takes the Time Stone. By doing so I think I caught a piece of subtle business, about on the same level as the look Obi-Wan gives Han Solo when Han makes his ‘parsecs’ crack in Star Wars. Strange is particularly intent as Thanos takes the Time Stone and puts it into his gauntlet– as if he wanted to make sure Thanos took it and added it to the gauntlet’s array of stones.

Bingo. I am certain that Doctor Strange, that tricksy smarty-pants, has put some sort of mystical whammy on the Time Stone. One that Thanos is not going to like. At all. One that is going to tick away like a time-bomb and play a big part in the Avengers’ ultimate victory.

The thought makes me grin maniacally and rub my hands in glee. It makes the cliffhanger easier to deal with. It is the sort of smart plotting that has made these movies, in general, a joy to watch (okay, not all equally. Can you people just get over hating The Dark World, please?).

Last night I begged the movie’s producers to speed up the release of the next Avengers film. I know, realistically, that’s not going to happen, if only because the next film is undoubtedly tied to the release of the Captain Marvel movie (oh, and there’s a sweet tidbit teasing that flick in Infinity War, too). But I am a-quiver with anticipation. The next year’s going to pass sooo slowly….

Meanwhile, the only solution is to go see Infinity War again. I’ll just try not to cackle when Strange hands over the Time Stone. You’re riding high now, Thanos, but just you wait, bitch– you are going down.

This is not a review of Avengers: Infinity War, which I just saw on an early showing. It is more of a quick and emotionally-laden reaction, with just a few observations on a few points in the movie. Above all, in opposition to my usual habit, I am going to avoid any spoilers, as it would almost certainly make me the subject of mob violence.

Okay, here we go–

Holy shit.

Holy wild-jungle-spawned bouncing off the wall pull the eject cord and tumble end-over-end through an exploding volcano shit. With sprinkles on top.

Character deaths. In the first five minutes. Before the freaking opening credits. OMG….

Lots of repartee, much of which goes by really fast, which demands a second viewing, assuming I can find a spare ticket for this movie over the weekend in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area. Frankly, not quite all of it worked– a couple of scenes between the Guardians of the Galaxy and Thor (that’s no spoiler, their meeting was in the trailers) were a little weak, in my opinion. But those were minor blips in this tsunami of a movie.

Speaking of trailers, be aware that there was a lot of stuff in the trailers that was not in the movie, and some of the stuff that was didn’t play out quite the same way. It’s all part of Marvel’s master-plan to keep the fans guessing.

Note: there is no mid-credits scene, but there is a comparatively long one at the end, and you want to wait for it. Definitely. For sure. I’m not joking.

Huge cliffhanger at the end. Freaking huge. If the cliffhanger at the end of The Empire Strikes Back was Mount St. Helens, then this one is fracking Mount Tambora, the reason 1816 was known as the “year without a summer”. You are warned.

Precisely because of that cliffhanger, they cannot get the next Avengers movie into theaters soon enough. All we know at the moment is that it is due to be released sometime next year. We don’t even know the title. Marvel and Disney, you cruel bastards, make the next movie a Christmas release. You can do it….

I don’t think there was a weak performance by anyone in this picture, although some of the mid-rank characters go by pretty quick. Somehow the filmmakers pretty much pulled off the feat of giving all the main characters enough to do so that none of them are slighted, which was something I was seriously worried about. It’s doubly impressive that the action takes place in several locations at once, and even more impressive that they still found time give Thanos some depth and feeling– not like another super-villain I could name from a certain recent movie. Yech. Really, there is no comparison.

Be prepared for a movie that moves really fast, and bounces between a lot of different locales. Personally I didn’t find the pace too hard to keep up with, but you definitely don’t want to go out for popcorn during the middle of the picture. Very bad idea.

See this movie, but hold on tight and brace yourself for that cliffhanger. Anybody who expects this movie to end tied up with a neat little ribbon is delusional. But it is a tremendous setup for the next film.

INTENSE AND HAIRY SPOILERS HEREAFTER!! I MEAN IT!!
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I loved the first Avengers movie, even though I have never been a huge fan of the comic (always X-Men for me, with a dash of Spider-man and Fantastic Four). Joss Whedon did a superlative job pulling together the disparate and often damaged individuals of the first film and creating a credible origin story that welded them together into a team. In the process he gave everyone the screen time and the attention they needed to become grounded characters in our minds. And the action suited the character development, and vice versa. All-in-all, it was a very well-written, tightly plotted action piece.

I can’t quite say the same for Age of Ultron.

Not that the movie is bad— the action sequences are intense, some of the twists Joss gives the characters are interesting (Natasha and Bruce Banner? Really?), and James Spader’s Ultron is a delightfully charming nutcase of a villain. The movie is well-done, in general.

But…to this (admittedly) picky, jaundiced old fart, the story-line seemed a little contrived, and some elements a tad too pat. The rescue of civilian bystanders during the climatic battle felt too safe, almost something that could muster the approval of the old Comic Code. At one point Thor disappears to figure out a vision given him by the Scarlet Witch (Wanda Maximoff), leaving the rest of the team to handle a further confrontation with Ultron on their own, a departure that felt to me like dereliction of duty. And, true to his well-known penchant for sacrificing characters for the sake of drama, Joss chose someone– Pietro (Quicksilver)– to die, selflessly, saving Hawkeye and a generic child. Somehow, though, his death didn’t elicit a lot of emotion in me. It was sort of, ‘oh, so that’s who Joss chose to knock off, okay, moving on.’ It almost felt rote.

But it was the climatic bit of peril the Avengers have to overcome that really left me cold. Ultron, obsessed with creating an extinction event for humanity so as to clear the planet for the next thing in evolutionary advancement (AI machines, of course), rips free a large portion of an Eastern European town from the earth and lifts it to about 20,000 feet, intending to drive it back into the planet by means of anti-gravity engines so as to recreate the effect of the dinosaur-killing asteroid of 65 million years ago.

Um, yeah.

To my mind there are a couple of things wrong with this scenario– 1. it’s hopelessly contrived and over-complicated, and 2. it probably wouldn’t work. It’s over-complicated because there are probably a hundred easier ways to accomplish the desired end (the annihilation of humanity), and it feels very much as if this particular modus exstinctio was chosen for its cinematic value. It wouldn’t work because of basic physics. The dinosaur-killing asteroid was not only massive, it was moving at many miles per second when it hit the Earth. Kinetic energy is directly proportional to the mass of the object, but it is also directly proportional to the square of the velocity at which the object is moving. The anti-gravity engines would have had to accelerate the mass of the town at something like (in very round numbers) 100 gravities (a delta-v the movie in no way depicts) to achieve the same terminal velocity, because the town, in just falling from that height, is going to hit the Earth in about 35 seconds anyway.

In short, I didn’t buy it.

And you, dear reader, at this point are probably thinking, Jeez, lighten up, dude, it’s just a superhero movie.

Well, you’re right. My problem is that I have high standards for my superhero movies.

I ran into the same issue, in a much smaller way, with Guardians of the Galaxy, and talked about it in my review of that film, months ago. I’m weird in that I actually want the science-fiction aspect of comic-book or superhero films (or comic-books, for that matter) to make sense, and not transgress the boundaries of known science too much.

As you might guess, I am often disappointed.

Still, as unreasonable as this expectation may be, it’s mine, I own it, and being disappointed in it with Age of Ultron meant that I didn’t enjoy the movie as much as I wanted to. ‘Nuff said.

My own weirdo prejudices aside, I think it is fair to say that, in general, Age of Ultron suffered, quite simply, from being a sequel– a very good sequel, but still basically a follow-on work that borrows its energy from its predecessor. It proves that, in the end, even a genius (yes, I use that word) like Joss Whedon cannot escape certain imperatives of story-telling– among which is the necessity of each tale to stand on its own and to find its own sources of strength. It also proves that that sort of loss of energy can happen to anyone.

So, there is a rumor that a teaser trailer for Star Wars Episode 7 will be attached to The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies when it premieres on December 17th. Considering that I will be ardently boycotting THBOTFA, I am unlikely to see the trailer for Episode 7 until it hits the internet– and I may avoid it, even then.

It is safe to say that I am not anticipating Episode 7 with any sense of joy. True enough, the franchise has been taken from George Lucas’ dead hands and given fresh impetus– but as a part of the Disney (ugh) corporate machine, which seems to have an instinct to trivialize everything it touches, and then, placed in the hands of J.J. Abrams for execution (no pun intended. Well, maybe….).

Let me be clear about my feelings re: Mr. Abrams– he is a quite competent film director and producer. His two Star Trek reboot films have been technically more than competent. They do not have the embarrassment/silliness factor that afflicts the Star Wars prequels (Episodes 1, 2, and 3). He at least takes his material seriously.

But…I don’t think much of his story-telling chops. The two ST films were, in my opinion, unnecessary in the first instance, and untidy story junk-piles in the second, especially Star Trek Into Darkness, with its head-scratching revision of Khan Noonien Singh. Both left me dissatisfied and wanting more, or, better yet, a time-machine, in which I would go back in time and fix the whole business from the start.

I will admit that part of the problem is my distaste for Abrams as the creator of both Alias and Lost, shows which started out incredibly strong, and then withered under the weight of reboots (Alias) and muddled, unresolved plot-lines (Lost) (to be fair, I am aware that Abrams’ involvement with Lost was intermittent, and the collective sins of the production were committed by a number of people). To put it succinctly, I don’t trust Abrams to create a story-line for Episode 7 that I will find enjoyable or even comprehensible.

An online cartoon from some years back around the debut of Revenge of the Sith still pretty much sums up my feelings–

Admittedly, this is all probably more than a little unfair, since Episode 7 is more than a year away. Abrams may yet pull a Wookie out of the storm-trooper helmet. I don’t expect him to, though, based on his past track record. More likely it will be an Ewok….

I will also admit that this rant is more-or-less just an old fart grieving the apparent inability of Hollywood in general, and probably Disney in particular, to deliver the kind of wonder and excitement I knew when I saw the first Star Wars. I will probably never again feel the kind of joyous punch-to-the-gut I felt the first time I saw that Star Destroyer pass over my head, chasing Princess Leia’s ship. That scene is so iconic now that those who didn’t see the film in first release in 1977 can probably never grasp just how stunning it was– how much, in short, this was something that had never been seen before, and how much it was a watershed in film history (both for good and bad). Perhaps it is unfair to hold up any subsequent film to comparison with that kind of culture-changing event.

But, then, I am not noted for being a very fair person. For me, the Star Wars franchise is dead, and neither Disney marketing pixie dust nor Abrams’ problematic story-telling skills are going to revive it. Requiescat in pace….

Meanwhile, if there are no earth-shaking movies on the horizon, there is at least the prospect of something good. And, by golly, guess whose fingerprints are on it….